Saint Paul's entry into Europe leads us to reflect on its Christian role and our attitude to it.

This week's news 

The multicultural nature of Britain has been a significant subject in election campaigning. 

An easy resort is to blame ‘Europe’. 

Reflection

The Holy Spirit isn’t afraid of Europe. So far the Eastertide readings from Acts have looked to imperially marginal Jerusalem but now, at a critical crossing, Luke, in the excitement, shows his hand by switching from being a narrator to being a participant. As if to celebrate, this week we meet the somewhat exotic figure of Lydia, a seller of purple dye. She is quite a change from the fishermen, tanners and soldiers we have so far met and, yes, the key player in this European venture is a woman, open and hospitable, quite a contrast with the grumpy man whom Jesus cures because he can't get across the small piece of land from his pitch to the healing water. Lydia's healing water is the Baptism which is the initiation rite at the beginning of the pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem where, you will see, (Revelation 21.20) the final stone of the twelve, for the beloved Tribe of Benjamin, is purple. 

Just as baptism involves a critical crossing from old ways to new, so does our Pilgrimage in Grace which is, necessarily, the journey of the open heart and the open mind. This is why prejudice against difference, and a refusal to come to terms with our obligations and debts is entirely necessary. For all the snarling and sneering, we live in a European tradition of Christendom which began with Lydia's hospitality to Paul and which made Europe the engine room of Christianity for almost two thousand years, for which we, as European Gentiles, should be thankful. Many of us in the United Kingdom are proud of our religious and political difference from continental Europe, but as Christians we should be humble in what unites us rather than proud in what divides us. 

At a much more mundane level, if we accept the ethic of sharing that is prominent in Acts, we can't be part of a Europe where we reap all the benefits of a club, but don't bear any of the burdens. We should be ashamed of the recent outpouring of bile against Romanians and Bulgarians who are quite entitled, under instruments our Government signed, to come here to live and work alongside us. How would we feel about regular, rich attenders at our church who don't make a financial contribution? And how legitimate is it to blame ‘otherness’, bureaucratic, racial or cultural, for our own ills? How many of us, for example, know anything about the workings of the accursed ‘Brussels’ and how much do we know about the European Union other than its beaches and the odd church or museum?

The great theologian Karl Barth famously said that we should hold Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other; but I say that when their values clash we should stick with the Bible. 

The opportunity to read a significant chunk of the Acts of the Apostles over the Easter seasons means that we can learn much from it about how to confront a hostile world rather than complaining about it and about the flourishing of the gospel within multicultural settings. We also discover that the primacy of the individual over the socio-political is at odds with the injunction of Jesus to love our neighbour. Hospitality must not degenerate into persuading people to do what we want.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, 

as we go out into the world, 

may we take with us the hospitality 

that you have shown us in Creation 

and in the gift of your Son's Church. 

Inspired by the Holy Spirit, 

may we love those we do not like, 

embracing the stranger and seeing you in all peoples.

Amen.

Questions

• Is there a contradiction between how we conduct our religious and political discourse?
• What do you know about European Christianity?

Action

Find out how the European Union makes its rules.

Find out how we arrive at our immigration figures.

Young People

Find some historical maps of Europe from different dates and compare them.

Kevin Carey is a Reader in the Church of England. He maintains a web site of Christian resources and writes theological fiction, Biblical commentary and religious poetry. He is Chair of the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and runs his own IT consultancy.

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